a girl, a boy, and the mess they made
by lepylil
Summary: "Are we just destined to fail at this thing?" Alex asked. "What do you mean?" "Ya know. Life." "Oh. Yeah. I figured that out the day I realized my idea of the 'perfect future' included my sister as my wife." Justin said.


Note: This fic is entirely based on the song "A Girl, A Boy, and A Graveyard" by Jeremy Messersmith. I highly recommend listening to the song before reading this. Or after. Or during. Or before, during, and after.

Alex took the long way home. She needed space to think, and breathe. Somehow the sun began to set, and it was already dusk. The sky was that weird in-between color of purple and grey with a few orange clouds thrown about the horizon.

She hated this. She felt trapped and claustrophobic and there was just no way out at this point. They'd already screwed things up too much.

So she texted Justin, calling on him to help her, comfort her, and she knew he would come. Because he always did.

They met in an abandoned parking lot, decorated with weeds growing up through the cracks in the cement. Alex almost tripped on the jagged concrete that had been torn up in places because of tree roots growing from underneath. The air was still and weirdly neutral; not hot, not cold, not windy. Just still. Suffocating.

She saw him jogging towards her from across the lot. Tears welled up in her eyes. It'd been weeks since she'd seen him. She wanted to run to him and leap into his arms, but she felt glued to the ground.

He got closer. He looked older. That was ridiculous though, he couldn't have aged that much in three weeks.

She knew he was stressed. He'd probably been up every night of the past three weeks, searching for a spell to reverse this _mess_.

"Alex." he breathed, now only a few inches away from her.

Now she couldn't help it. Hot tears tore down her cheeks, falling onto the cracked cement below.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to feel." she choked.

Justin shook his head, his own eyes now turning red and watery.

"I'm so sorry. I promise I'll fix this, I will."

"But what then? We can't ever..."

"I know." he said.

"This won't go away. Even if you did find a spell, how am I supposed to be _just_ your sister again?" Alex asked, her voice cracking.

Justin felt like his stomach was made of led. He knew she was right. Everything was just… broken.

"I feel like I'm waiting to come back to life. I don't want to spend my time waiting, I want… I want…" Alex said before bursting into uncontrollable sobs.

"I know." he repeated, trying to remain strong, and silent, and together.

He was failing.

He crumbled to his knees, head in his hands. Alex knelt down beside him.

"Justin?" she said, her voice throaty and hoarse from crying.

"I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

"No, Justin, it's not your fault. It's not." Alex said as she sat on the ground.

Justin wiped his face and then sat down himself, right beside Alex.

There was silence. It wasn't awkward or comfortable or relaxing… there was an absence of noise because there was an absence of feeling. Their emotions were laid bare on their skin, dripping out like condensation, and there was nothing left to say.

The siblings' hands were mere inches away from each other, palms down, pressing into the dirty, rocky surface.

Justin thought that maybe if put just _this much_ more pressure on his hand, one of those tiny rocks would break his skin and he could bleed out all his sins.

And then he felt the feather light touch of Alex's pinky pushing against his own.

It was like a lightning bolt. It was also like floating in a perfectly warm and endless ocean. But then, Alex was always full of contradictions.

Neither of them looked down as Alex's hand moved further over Justin's, until her smaller hand covered his.

Her legs were drawn to her chest now, her chin resting on her knees.

They stared straight ahead and watched the sun get swallowed by the horizon.

"Are we just destined to fail at this thing?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Ya know. Life."

"Oh. Yeah. I figured that out the day I realized my idea of the 'perfect future' included my sister as my wife."

Alex sighed.

"You know I'll never leave you though, right? Even if our ever after isn't happy, I'm not going anywhere. I'll always stick by you." Justin said.

Alex nodded. And that should have made her feel better, but the idea that they'd forever be glued to each other and never _have_ each other just hurt more.

And hours later the sun came up again, and cast its golden light on their backs.

So they pulled their hands apart and rose off the ground. Blue-grey eyes met chocolate brown, and all they wanted to do was give in to the magnetic pull between them. They wanted to let their lips meet, and Alex wanted to wrap her legs around his waist and tangle her hands in his hair, and Justin wanted to hold her tight and never let go.

But they didn't.

Because the last time they did, they'd been caught. Their parents found them wrapped in each other's arms, writhing on Alex's bed, in the same room that was in the same house that the two had grown up in.

And there was screaming and crying and accusations. Max came in to see what the commotion was, and saw his two older siblings sitting with their shirts clutched to their chests and fear on their faces.

There was guilt and sinking-stomachs, and they couldn't stand the look of horror on their parents' faces.

There was denial, and then there was failed reasoning, and there were threats of being sent to separate boarding schools, never to see each other again.

And then there was a spell.

It was an impulse, a reckless solution to a situation caused by recklessness (and lust, and love).

So there was a flash of his wand, and a _'Fix this disaster, make everyone forget the mistakes of me and my sister.'_

And the universe fell like a small stone in a rockslide as everything was forever changed.

Because their parents and Max did forget what they saw. They also forgot that they ever had a daughter and a sister named Alex. They forgot her face and her laugh and her sarcasm and her unique sense of fashion and her love of pickles and painting and her hatred of hard work.

Alex was gone in an instant, and Justin panicked. He felt the world fall out from beneath him as he thought that she was really, really g _one_ and now only lived in his memories. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't move.

And then he got a call on his cell phone from Alex, who sounding like terrified little girl as she cried on the other end of the line and explained that she was calling from a pay phone after waking up in a house she didn't recognize full of people who said they were her family, but sure as hell weren't.

Justin told her he'd be there in an instant, and he was, and they fell into each other's arms and didn't let go as they cried on the New York city sidewalk.

So, they don't kiss anymore. Which would be a lot easier if they simply didn't see each other anymore, but that's impossible, so they resolve to simply see each other a whole lot less.

Which Justin thinks feels like a knife being stabbed into his heart, over and over again, every single day that he wakes up and Alex's room is nothing more than storage space for workout equipment and half-finished sewing projects and the ski gear they only use once every three years.

It feels like one more twist of that knife every single night that he spends down in the lair, reading and rereading every book he can find, convinced the answer will be on just the next page.

Alex feels empty, like she's been pieced together by someone that didn't read the instructions correctly. And she hates that every day she's left _waiting,_ while memories of her life become just memories, and she worries that her life will never be the same again.

And so she turns and walks away, back towards the house that's not her home, while Justin gets to go _home_ , and she can't help but hate him just a bit.

She then hates herself just a bit for resenting him for this. There's equal blame, she knows that. She knows that. So maybe if she tells herself that enough, it will be okay.

Except, not _okay._

 _Nothing will ever be okay again,_ she thinks as she pushes open the plain door to the brownstone house that isn't hers.

"Welcome home, Lucy!"


End file.
